Australian politicians struggling to not upset the Trump administration by refusing to endorse its proposal for the ethnic cleaning of Palestinians was solely the start. There’s solely fake bipartisanship on a two-state resolution; many within the Coalition are deeply hostile to Palestinians. However on a problem of actual bipartisanship — the necessity to assist Ukraine defend itself in opposition to Vladimir Putin’s invasion — Donald Trump presents a far larger problem. The US president needs to appease Putin by handing him Ukrainian territory, exclude Ukraine from “peace talks” and switch Ukraine into an financial colony of the US.
Trump’s “provide” to primarily take over not merely Ukraine’s vital minerals provides but in addition its main infrastructure is a straight shakedown. If Volodymyr Zelenskyy needs safety from Russia, he has to pay Trump for it — and the fee can be exorbitant.
Trump isn’t simply insisting allies pay for their very own defence as a result of the US is sick of paying for it. It’s pure gangsterism. If the high-minded US willingness to “pay any value, bear any burden, meet any hardship, assist any good friend” in defence of liberty was at all times coupled with a need to make the world protected and affluent for US capitalism, Trump has eliminated the final layer of pretence and remodeled international coverage into that of a belligerent rack-renter hellbent on extracting as a lot as he can from anybody much less highly effective than him.
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He doesn’t merely have a brand new imperial venture in thoughts — colonising Greenland and Gaza, occupying Canada, turning Ukraine into an outpost of company America. He needs to MAGAify the world. His co-president Elon Musk and Vice President JD Vance overtly intervene within the politics of different nations, together with notional US allies, to again far-right events. In the meantime different nations’ financial or tax insurance policies that inconvenience US firms should be eliminated lest the offending nations face punitive tariffs. Trump envisages a very international empire during which US capital might be lastly, and fully, unfettered.
The query this creates for Australian policymakers is twofold. Firstly, is that this an agenda with which we need to enroll? Are we completely happy to endorse a US that operates not because the world’s indispensable nation however because the world’s gangster nation? Undoubtedly many on the suitable could be completely happy (and lots of on the left could be relieved the masks has lastly dropped, revealing the true nature of US hegemony).
It’s more likely to result in a sequence of vexing questions: does Australia again the appeasement of Russia? Will it again US colonisation tasks in the event that they happen? Will it again the US turning its again on European allies? Whither the 5 Eyes when Canada and the UK are targets for US aggression? And what occurs if Australia turns into, like Canada, the subsequent ally to really feel Trump’s wrath, to have the vice chairman backing One Nation, demanding the Pharmaceutical Advantages Scheme be dumped and US fossil gas firms given particular tax remedy?
However extra critical is the issue of strategic threat administration. No ally can now depend on the USA. Trump’s native supporters could really feel they will depend on his hostility to China to maintain the US in our nook, however what occurs within the occasion Trump decides to do some kind of cope with Xi Jinping, one which may abandon US allies within the western Pacific? That’s what you do with dictators in Trump’s world: make a deal, no matter who else it hurts.
It is a new world for Australia, and our policymakers appear satisfied every little thing can be nice, that the US will proceed to ensure our safety, that we will navigate all of the hurdles thrown up by Trump till the US returns to regular. However the US of historic reminiscence could have disappeared, changed by MAGAland, a nation solid in resentment, retribution, racketeering and racial supremacy. Australia can’t depend on such a rustic to spend a single cent, or a single drop of blood, on our safety.
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From a threat administration perspective, Australia desperately wants recent excited about its defence priorities, by way of a brand new Defence white paper that takes under consideration a world gone MAGA. One precedence is perhaps reassessing our wants, with much less concentrate on working because the western Pacific wing of the US warfare machine and extra concentrate on larger provision for Australia to defend itself. Underneath such a reassessment, AUKUS is an apparent casualty: the submarines are supposed to be a part of a US warfare with China, not a defensive asset for Australia.
Inevitably, it is going to imply larger defence expenditure — maybe to the three% hawks and Sinophobic warmongers are demanding. To not combat China, however in order that Australia has much less have to depend on a US remodeled right into a high-tech fascist dystopia, and feels much less strain to fall into line after we’re referred to as to affix the subsequent US imperialist enterprise. The largest obstacle isn’t discovering the additional tens of billions this may require from taxpayers, however reforming the Division of Defence, and opening it as much as actual scrutiny and accountability, so that cash isn’t wasted in incompetence and venality.
One other precedence is perhaps larger cooperation with allies who’re in the identical boat as us in relation to the US, unable to rely on it any longer. Allies like Europe, and particularly France and Germany, with their wonderful defence manufacturing capabilities (France may present nuclear submarines way more cheaply and shortly than beneath AUKUS), South Korea, Japan, Canada. Likewise, persevering with to put money into the Pacific as a bulwark in opposition to the growth of Chinese language affect.
Drifting alongside hoping that Trump will disappear from historical past and every little thing will reset in a number of years’ time is dangerous pondering — even in the event you assume we should always copy him in every little thing he does.
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